Sooner or Later
by Theophila
Summary: Everything went horribly wrong, and now she's all alone. But she is a princess, after all, so she's bound to get her happily ever after sooner or later... right? AU


**DISCLAIMER: **I don't owned _Tangled_. But I think you probably already knew this.

Also, this is a birthday gift for my friend The Passerby. Happy Birthday!

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Chapter 1: In Which Rapunzel Awakens and Finds Herself All Alone

In the end, it was the cold that woke her.

Apparently, she had fallen asleep weeping over his body, willing the spirit to return to it but knowing it would not. The sun's rays were shining with full strength into the tower—could she have slept through the whole night?—but she was freezing anyway, because he would never be warm again.

Somehow, the disastrous scene seemed even more nightmarish in daylight. The painting of the floating lanterns that had delighted her just a few days ago seemed to mock her now, and she had a horrid awareness that the ancient evil dust that had been, for 18 years, her mother, was dead forever at the bottom of the tower. All this was apart from the devastating fact that her first and only love was lying dead in her arms—and he had sacrificed himself for her. Rapunzel could not bring herself to look at him; she thought if she saw his face again, she would start to cry, and she was not sure that her eyes had any tears left.

She sat there for a few moments, staring dismally at the lifeless lengths of hair draped across the floor. Then slowly, her fingers acting of their own accord, she took the shard of mirror that lay near his pale fingertips and lifted it to her face. Her hair. Her golden, magical, longer-than-life hair was gone, most of it transformed into the dead heaps that surrounded her. What remained to crown her head was spiky, strangely light, and utterly foreign to her. She had been right not to bother with the futile song, because not a highlight of magic remained. There was no denying it—her hair was completely brown, without a trace of sun-born healing power, although on the whole it was still lighter than Eugene's.

_Eugene._ She would not lie to herself, not after 18 years of deception. Eugene was _dead_, and despite her innocence she knew that dead meantgone forever, just like her healing hair and her false mother. Even though she had virtually spent her entire life locked up by herself, Rapunzel had never felt so alone. As if sensing her thoughts, Pascal crawled onto her shoulder and sympathetically turned blue, but it did not really help. Rapunzel knew with the stark certainty that comes from a long cry that from now on, she would have to help herself. She put the shard of mirror down.

"Well, Pascal?" she said, her voice sounding scratchy and harsh in the tomblike silence of the tower. Rapunzel cleared her throat and tried again, "Well! I guess we should be going. No point staying here anymore…" She trailed off, then shook her head abruptly as if to clear it and began to stand up—gently, so as not to jostle his body. "I can't carry him, Pascal. But I can't just leave him here. Especially not slumped on the floor like this. It wouldn't—it wouldn't be right. Not after what he did. Not the famous Flynn Rider." She looked out the window, distressed and hopeless. She would not cry. She would not cry. She would not cry… "And I can't just shove him in my closet again." Rapunzel almost giggled but it came out as something more like a sob. Then an idea struck her with all the force of a frying pan, and she began to feel that maybe, just maybe, she could give Eugene a little of the respect his body deserved.

Running, Rapunzel crossed the room and rapidly flung all the clothes out of her old blue wardrobe. With considerable effort, she then dragged it to the center of the room and dropped it so that it lay flat on the floor. As if there were not a moment to lose, she ransacked her stock of paints, frowning between the different shades before deciding to take all of them. Finally, when the last finishing touches had been added and the last stroke of paint had been applied, she stepped back to appraise her work. In what seemed like only a few minutes—it was really hours—she had transformed her battered, antique wardrobe into a masterpiece that told the entire story of her and Eugene's brief, wonderful, time together. The sides depicted their first meeting, interrogation and all, and key moments along their journey—her first euphoric moments outside, the wild songfest at the Snuggly Duckling, the intense chase that followed, their near-drowning experience and the secrets they shared, and of course the joyous birthday celebration in the capital city. The inside of the wardrobe was adorned with a painted sea of floating golden lights, shining out like jewels against dark velvet. However, though these of the wardrobe showcased some of Rapunzel's very best art, it was the doors that really mattered. She had painted upon the doors the most perfect memory of her entire life, the moment when she and Eugene had almost kissed in the little boat surrounded by the floating lights and an illuminating love.

Almost kissed. She wished they had really kissed, and that Eugene had rowed their little boat far, far away as soon as the lights were done. It was a hopeless dream, but she wished that just once she could kiss him—and feel his warm, living lips kiss her back. Rapunzel felt her heart break a little bit more; she was begin to realize that some dreams do not come true.

Hating the fact that she had to drag him, Rapunzel managed to move the body to the center of the room and place it inside the wardrobe-turned-coffin. His arms were stiff, but she tried her best to force them into what seemed a natural position—one that would hide the crimson stain and make him look like he was sleeping. As an afterthought, Rapunzel gathered up the hair that lay around the room and placed it in the wardrobe, arranging it gently on both sides of him and using it to pillow his head.

If Rapunzel had been in a more practical state of mind, she might have collected some food to take on her journey away from the tower, or at least remembered to grab her frying pan for protection. As it was, her only thought was that she would have to leave behind the man she loved. He would want her to go and live her life. He had died so that she could. In a moment, she would take the hidden stairs out of the tower and try to somehow find her way back to the palace, where she would reveal her true identity to her true parents. For now, she would take one last look at the thief who had stolen her heart and revolutionized her dreams.

Rapunzel remembered the first time she had truly seen his face, after knocking him out cold with a frying pan and cautiously pushing back his hair to uncover his eyes with the same culinary instrument. She had never seen a man before, and was expecting a monster with pointy teeth and cruel eyes. Instead, she had discovered straight, white teeth, a handsome nose, and gentle, strong eyes that came to look at her as if she meant more than anything in the world.

Rapunzel may have been ignorant of many things, but as she softly closed the doors of the wardrobe, she knew for certain that she would never love anyone the way she loved Eugene Fitzherbert for as long as she lived.


End file.
